When hunting wild game with a bow and arrow and a fatal hit is made upon such game, more often than not, the game retreat out of the sight of the bow hunter before it expires. Under such circumstances, a bow hunter typically follows a blood trail left by the fatally hit game until the animal is found. From time to time, however, there will be little or no blood trail to follow. This can be caused by an arrow plugging up a wound, or for many other reasons. Another problem can be that rain will wash away a blood trail or snow will cover it. This problem is a major one especially when hunting wild turkeys because they very rarely leave a good blood trail. This is due in part to the fact that the feathers stop the blood flow; and, secondarily, to the fact that turkeys do not contain as much blood as do larger animals, such as deer.
For the aforementioned reasons, string tracking devices have been devised for attachment to a bow and arrow whereby a large quantity of string in some kind of a container is attached to the bow handle. One end of the string is attached to the arrow so that when the arrow is shot from the bow, the string will follow the arrow. Then as the animal retreats, the string will unwind from the container and the bow hunter merely needs to follow the string to find the game shot by the arrow.
One of the problems with prior art string tracking attachments is that the string hangs down loosely from the arrow to the container holding the string, and sometimes unwinds due to such loose condition. Another major problem with this loose string is that as a bow hunter moves through the woods, concentrating on trying to find game, the loose string often catches on a branch or the like, causing the string to become unwound prematurely and render the string tracker inoperable until and unless the string is rewound onto the spool, or the excess string is cut off and an appropriate length of string between the string tracking container and where it attaches to the arrow is again utilized.